MIT News - School of Architecture + Planninghttps://news.mit.edu/rss/school/architecture-and-planning
MIT News is dedicated to communicating to the media and the public the news and achievements of the students, faculty, staff and the greater MIT community.enSun, 24 Sep 2017 11:00:01 -0400Targeted, crowdsourced aid for Mexican earthquake victimshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/manos-a-la-obra-crowdsourcing-aids-mexican-earthquake-victims-0924
MIT team’s online platform links those who need aid with those who can help. (Este artículo está disponible en español.)Sun, 24 Sep 2017 11:00:01 -0400School of Architecture and Planninghttps://news.mit.edu/2017/manos-a-la-obra-crowdsourcing-aids-mexican-earthquake-victims-0924<p><a href="#spanish"><i>Lea este artículo en español.</i></a></p>
<p>On Sept. 21, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Mexico City and the surrounding region, demolishing buildings, killing hundreds, and trapping and injuring many more. More than 3,000 structures were damaged in Mexico City alone, according to news reports.</p>
<p>The disaster galvanized Mexican students in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) to construct a crowdsourcing platform designed to link those in need of help with volunteers best positioned to assist with specific needs.</p>
<p>Using the online platform, <a href="https://buzoherbert.github.io/mapa_ayuda/" target="_blank">Manos a la Obra</a>, affected individuals and volunteers can post requests and offers for various types of aid, such as medical services, shelter, food, and water, as well as their contact information so that they can communicate directly. The information collected by the platform is geolocated and displayed on a map in real-time to allow organizations and individuals the ability to tailor aid responses to each request.</p>
<p>The platform’s capacity to disseminate information quickly and target aid efforts efficiently has led to its adoption by volunteers, civil organizations, and other networks in Mexico. In the first 48 hours after the earthquake, the platform collected over 1,000 aid offers and requests throughout the affected region of Central Mexico and beyond. Aid offers continue to be rapidly organized and publicized, facilitating logistics for aid workers on the ground in Mexico City and the affected area.</p>
<p>The group behind the platform includes graduate students Daniel Heriberto Palencia, Akemi Matsumoto, Ricardo Alvarez, and Carlos Sainz Caccia from DUSP and the MIT Senseable City Lab. The team is now concentrating their efforts on linking the site’s information with volunteers, aid distribution centers, and logistic partners on the ground to deploy aid more quickly.</p>
<p>“We encourage those who would like to support victims in and around Mexico City to visit Manos a la Obra and share the platforms with their networks to ensure their help reaches the right people, at the right time,” says the team.</p>
<p>- - - -&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong><a id="spanish" name="spanish">Ayuda dirigida y crowdsourced para las víctimas del terremoto mexicano</a>&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>El 21 de septiembre, un terremoto de magnitud 7,1 golpeó la ciudad de México y la región colindante, demoliendo edificios, matando a más de 250, atrapando e hiriendo a muchos más. Solo en la Cd.de México de 3.000 estructuras fueron dañadas, según informes de prensa.&nbsp;</p>
<p>El desastre galvanizó a estudiantes mexicanos en el Departamento de Estudios Urbanos y Planificación (DUSP) del MIT quienes desarrollaron una plataforma de crowdsourcing diseñada para vincular a aquellos damnificados que necesitan ayuda con voluntarios geográficamente cercanos que ofrecen asistencia específica a sus necesidades.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Usando la plataforma en línea, <a href="http://buzoherbert.github.io/mapa_ayuda/" target="_blank">Manos a la Obra</a>, damnificados y voluntarios pueden publicar solicitudes y ofertas de ayuda de varios tipos, tales como servicios médicos, refugio, comida y agua, así como su información de contacto para que estos puedan comunicarse directamente. La información recogida por la plataforma es geolocalizada y mostrada en un mapa en tiempo real el cual permite a las organizaciones e individuos adaptar las respuestas de ayuda a cada solicitud.&nbsp;</p>
<p>La capacidad de la plataforma para difundir información rápidamente y orientar los esfuerzos de ayuda eficientemente ha llevado a su adopción por voluntarios, organizaciones civiles y otras redes en México. En las primeras 48 horas después del terremoto, la plataforma recolectó más de 1.000 ofertas y solicitudes de ayuda en toda la región afectada del centro del país y más allá. Las ofertas de ayuda continúan organizándose y publicándose rápidamente, facilitando la logística para los trabajadores humanitarios en la Ciudad de México y la zona afectada.&nbsp;</p>
<p>El grupo detrás de la plataforma incluye a los estudiantes de postgrado Daniel Heriberto Palencia, Akemi Matsumoto, Ricardo Alvarez y Carlos Sainz Caccia de DUSP y el MIT Senseable City Lab. El equipo ahora está concentrando sus esfuerzos en vincular la información del sitio con voluntarios, centros de distribución de ayuda y con quienes puedan ofrecer ayuda logística local para desplegar ayuda más rápidamente. &nbsp;</p>
<p>"Pedimos a quienes deseen apoyar a las víctimas en y alrededor de la Ciudad de México a visitar Manos a la Obra y pasar la voz sobre esta herramienta para asegurar que la ayuda llegue a las personas adecuadas, en el momento adecuado,"&nbsp;dice el equipo. &nbsp;</p>
Volunteers and rescuers work at a collapsed building at Colonia Roma, Mexico City. Photo: ProtoplasmaKid/Wikimedia CommonsDisaster response, Natural disasters, Latin America, Mexico, Earthquakes, Urban studies and planning, Crowdsourcing, School of Architecture and PlanningProjects make inroads on global food and water challengeshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/j-wafs-global-food-and-water-challenges-0921
MIT researchers supported by J-WAFS present results of their work on food and water security.Thu, 21 Sep 2017 10:30:00 -0400David L. Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/j-wafs-global-food-and-water-challenges-0921<p>With goals that include finding better ways to purify and desalinate water, improving fertilizer production, and preventing food contamination, nearly two dozen research teams presented updates on their work at a day-long event on Sept. 15. The workshop featured the recipients of grants from the Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab (J-WAFS) program at MIT.</p>
<p>John H. Lienhard V, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water and Food and the director of J-WAFS, introduced the workshop by reporting that the program has received and funded grant proposals from all five of MIT’s schools, provided 24 seed grants and nine “Solutions” commercialization grants, and attracted industrial partners including the $4 billion water technology company Xylem.</p>
<p>J-WAFS has been awarding seed grants since its founding in 2014. The reports at the workshop included presentations on work that is just getting started under the latest grants, as well as progress reports from grants awarded over the past three years.</p>
<p>Among the newly awarded grants, three relate to improving water supplies for drinking and irrigation. Two others involve ways of providing low-cost, locally sourced fertilizers for crop production, and one is for a method to grow algae in bioreactors for use as animal feed or feedstock for biofuels.</p>
<p>Among the new water sector projects is one by Gail E. Kendall Professor of Mechanical Engineering Evelyn Wang and chemistry professor Mircea Dinca, who are developing a practical, low-cost device to extract potable water directly from the air, even in low-humidity regions. This project builds on technology <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2017/MOF-device-harvests-fresh-water-from-air-0414">previously developed</a> in Wang’s lab and potentially could triple or quadruple the water output of the previous version, Wang said.</p>
<p>Another, led by Stephen Graves, the Abraham J. Siegel Professor of Management Science at the Sloan School of Management, and Bish Sanyal, the Ford International Professor of Urban Development in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, will focus on agricultural extension services in Senegal and why the current services do not reach small farmers. This research will probe to what extent private firms with knowledge of irrigation technology can supplement public efforts.&nbsp; In particular, the research will analyze the current barriers to privately provided irrigation and identify ways in which the benefits of such irrigation practices can be channeled toward small firms.</p>
<p>The fertilizer projects included a concept for deriving potassium fertilizer from feldspar, a mineral that is abundant in Africa and other regions, instead of importing such fertilizers at high cost. The idea is being developed by Associate Professor Antoine Allanore of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.</p>
<p>Another project, led by Karthish Manthiram, the Warren K. Lewis Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering, seeks to develop an electrochemical method for producing nitrogen fertilizer using smaller, lower-cost systems than the huge industrial facilities currently used for such production.</p>
<p>“In sub-Saharan Africa, one of the major factors holding back a ‘green revolution’ is a lack of fertilizer use,” said Davide Ciceri, a research scientist on Allanore’s research team. These projects could help to address that lack and increase productivity on farms in Africa, which presently lag far behind those of other continents. “Africa has the lowest yields in the world and the lowest nitrogen fertilizer use,” Manthiram said.</p>
<p>Among the projects nearing the end of their two-year grant term was one that aims to entirely eliminate the need for nitrogen fertilizers, in this case by using biological engineering to create cereal grain species capable of producing their own fertilizer, as some leguminous plants already do. This project, led by professor of biological engineering Christopher Voigt, received a second J-WAFS seed grant this year to further develop the work.</p>
<p>Another concluding project, led by professors Noelle Selin of the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and Valerie Karplus, the Class of 1943 Career Development Assistant Professor&nbsp;of Global Economics and Management, examined the prevalence of mercury pollution of rice in China and its correlation with emissions from potential contributing sources such as coal plants. These results could help bring about policy changes that focus on both legacy soil contamination and future emissions from the power sector.</p>
<p>Other projects studied ways of using climate change projections to help guide water and agriculture policy in the developing world, and opportunities for increasing food production in these areas. J-WAFS-supported researchers are also studying water systems, including how water percolates into the soil under different conditions — a crucial factor for the recharging of aquifers. Others are investigating how to detect and remediate various sources of pollution in water systems, and ways of detecting specific kinds of pathogens in food, fish, and aquaculture systems, and throughout global food supply chains. &nbsp;</p>
<p>Principal investigators of concluding projects reported that their seed grants have helped them to secure substantial follow-on funding, including a multimillion dollar award for a project on food safety and supply chains, led by MIT Sloan School of Management professors Retsef Levi, Tauhid Zaman, and Yanchong Zheng.</p>
<p>The J-WAFS program funds work in both the developing and developed worlds, Lienhard said. Its researchers have been studying not just new technologies but also the social, economic, and political factors needed to allow such improvements to move toward widespread implementation. “It isn’t enough to have a great invention that works in a lab here in Cambridge. It has to work on site,” he said.</p>
<p>The program was “formed to catalyze research around MIT in the areas of water and food,” Lienhard said. “We’re really interested to see how we can bring the unique strengths of the Institute, in technology and science and business innovation and urban planning and social science, to bear on the urgent challenges that we face around water and food, going into the future.”</p>
<p>“We’ve gotten a lot of great proposals, and we don’t have enough money to fund them all,” he said. “But we’re doing our best to make the money go as far as we can.” J-WAFS will issue a new call for seed research proposals to the MIT community this fall.</p>
Erica James, associate professor of medical anthropology and urban studies in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, co-presents with Dennis McLaughlin, H.M. King Bhumibol Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (not pictured) on the results of their research project, Leverage Points: Opportunities for Increasing Food Production in Developing Countries, funded by a 2015 J-WAFS seed grant.Photo: Lisa AbitbolResearch, Grants, Funding, Chemical engineering, Mechanical engineering, Urban studies and planning, DMSE, Business and management, Climate change, Supply chains, Technology and society, Sustainability, Solar, Pollution, Materials Science and Engineering, Global Warming, Environment, Desalination, Developing countries, Design, Chemistry, Africa, School of Engineering, School of Science, Sloan School of Management, School of Architecture and Planning, Biological engineering, Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab (J-WAFS)MIT and Tsinghua University sign urban innovation agreement https://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-and-tsinghua-university-sign-urban-innovation-agreement-0919
Future City Innovation Connector to support projects addressing rapid growth of Chinese cities.Tue, 19 Sep 2017 16:30:00 -0400MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-and-tsinghua-university-sign-urban-innovation-agreement-0919<p>MIT and Tsinghua University in China have signed an agreement establishing a new technology project, the Future City Innovation Connector (FCIC), which is designed to support research and startup teams applying ideas to China’s rapidly growing urban areas.</p>
<p>FCIC will draw upon the work of MIT professors and labs to identify innovative concepts and technologies that could be implemented in China. At MIT, FCIC will be formally hosted in the MIT China Future City Lab. Its founder and faculty director is Siqi Zheng, the Samuel Tak Lee Associate Professor of Real Estate Development and Entrepreneurship, in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning and its Center for Real Estate. Zheng also holds a visiting professor position at Tsinghua University.</p>
<p>The program will run in conjunction with the MIT School of Architecture and Planning’s entrepreneurship accelerator, DesignX. FCIC will also work extensively with Chinese municipal governments and industry leaders to support research and startup teams.</p>
<p>The agreement was formally signed on Sept. 16 by MIT Provost Martin A. Schmidt and Tsinghua University Vice President and Provost Bin Yang. Richard Lester, MIT’s associate provost for international activities, also participated in the signing ceremony.</p>
<p>“I am thrilled to see the launch of this new collaboration initiative,” Schmidt says. “Under the leadership of Professor Zheng, the MIT-Tsinghua Future City Innovation Connector will become the new starting point of a series of engagements between MIT and Tsinghua in entrepreneurship, education, and urban research.”</p>
<p>Zheng, an expert on urban economics, development, and real estate, says “FCIC aims to support city innovation ideas and startup teams involving MIT and Tsinghua University students, across all disciplines, to make our cities better.”</p>
<p>As Zheng also noted, FCIC can play a significant practical role by linking together researchers and entrepreneurs, on the one hand, with Chinese policymakers and industrial leaders. The project aims to establish collaborations with Chinese cities that face challenges such as urban resilience, urban health, housing, environmental sustainability, responsive urban management, and the development of “smart” cities.</p>
<p>“Urban-focused research teams and startups&nbsp;face unique challenges when they want to work on urban problems in China,” Zheng adds. “Partnerships with city governments are most critical to the success of these teams. The MIT-Tsinghua Future City Innovation Connector will help the innovative urban research teams and startups at MIT and Tsinghua engage with the Chinese market and government resources to realize their societal impact and economic success.”</p>
<p>FCIC is the first program of its kind that explicitly aims to apply the frontiers of urban research and technology to the immense urbanization occuring in China, which should be powered by technological innovation and new business ventures, FCIC leaders believe.</p>
<p>“The rich academic intellectual resources and active entrepreneurship ecosystem at both universities have huge potential to land its impact in Chinese cities,” Bin Yang says. “MIT-Tsinghua FCIC will build broad partnership with local city and industries to scale up its impact. It is of great meaning to MIT, Tsinghua University, local governments, and industry leaders.”</p>
<p>MIT and Tsinghua University have developed extensive formal collaborations in recent decades, across a range of areas involving their shared commitment to research, education, and the support of entrepreneurship.</p>
Pictured from left: Siqi Zheng, Samuel Tak Lee Associate Professor and faculty director of China Future City Lab; Bin Yang, vice president and provost of Tsinghua University; Martin Schmidt, MIT provost; Richard Lester, MIT associate provost for international activities; Zhengzhen Tan, executive director of China Future City Lab
Courtesy of the MIT China Future City LabSchool of Architecture and Planning, Urban studies and planning, Center for Real Estate, China, Cities, Global, Real estate, International development, Research, StartupsTimes Higher Education names MIT No. 2 university worldwide for the arts and humanitieshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/times-higher-ed-names-mit-no-2-university-worldwide-arts-and-humanities-0918
Schools of Architecture and Planning; Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and several centers are home to the arts and humanities at MIT.Mon, 18 Sep 2017 14:05:01 -0400School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/times-higher-ed-names-mit-no-2-university-worldwide-arts-and-humanities-0918<p>The Times Higher Education 2018 World University Rankings has named MIT the No. 2 university in the world for arts and humanities. The two top&nbsp;ranked universities — Stanford University and MIT — are closely aligned in the evaluation metrics, which assess the arts and humanities at research-intensive universities across core missions, including research, teaching, and international outlook.</p>
<p>The Times Higher Education World University Rankings is an annual publication of university rankings by <em>Times Higher Education, </em>a leading British education magazine. This ranking of MIT’s global role in the arts and humanities follows other recent recognition for the Institute’s contributions to individual fields and disciplines. The 2018 QS World University rankings, for example, name MIT as the world’s top university for architecture, economics, engineering, linguistics, and natural sciences, as well as the No. 1 university in the world overall.</p>
<p>Of the <em>Times Higher Education</em> ranking, MIT President L. Rafael Reif said, “Perhaps because 'TECHNOLOGY' is carved in stone above MIT's front door, outsiders are not always prepared for the caliber of our research and education in the humanities and the arts. But it is the wisdom of the remarkable scholars in these fields, and lessons from their disciplines, that help our students develop fully into the creative citizens and inspired leaders they seek to become.”</p>
<p>“The arts and humanities are deeply embedded at MIT, throughout our schools and departments and across the curriculum,” said Hashim Sarkis, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning. “I am delighted to see this broad strength recognized not only for its importance to MIT but for what it offers to the world.”<br />
<br />
Outstanding programs in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences — including linguistics, history, philosophy, music and theater arts, literature, global studies and languages, media studies, and writing — sit alongside equally strong initiatives within the School of Architecture and Planning in the visual arts, architecture, design, and history, theory, and criticism. These disciplines are complemented by the Center for Art, Society and Technology (CAST), the office of the Arts at MIT, the MIT LIST Visual Arts Center, and the MIT Museum.</p>
<p>“At MIT, we view the humanities and arts as essential for advancing knowledge, for educating young students, and for solving global issues,” said Melissa Nobles, Kenan Sahin dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. “The world’s problems are so complex they’re not only scientific and technological problems. They are as much human and moral problems.”</p>
"100 percent of MIT undergraduates study the arts and humanities, joining our faculty in addressing some of the largest, most consequential human questions of our time," notes Melissa Nobles, Kenan Sahin dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.Photo: Madcoverboy/Wikimedia CommonsAwards, honors and fellowships, Rankings, Architecture, Arts, Design, Education, teaching, academics, Global Studies and Languages, History, Humanities, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E), Literature, Linguistics, Philosophy, Comparative Media Studies/Writing, Theater, Music, SHASS, School of Architecture and PlanningResearchers identify opportunities to improve quality, reduce cost of global food assistance deliveryhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-researchers-identify-opportunities-to-improve-quality-reduce-cost-global-food-assistance-0913
Research from MIT&#039;s CITE program leverages a procurement process to identify opportunities for improving food aid supply chains.Wed, 13 Sep 2017 13:55:01 -0400Lauren McKown | MIT D-Labhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-researchers-identify-opportunities-to-improve-quality-reduce-cost-global-food-assistance-0913<p>Food assistance delivered to the right people at the right time and in the right place can save lives. In 2016 alone, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) delivered over 1.7 million metric tons of food assistance to over 30 million people in 50 countries around the world. However, USAID estimates that over $10 million of that food never made it to the plates of people in need due to spoilage and infestation.</p>
<p>Proper food assistance packaging can be a major contributing factor toward preventing spoilage and infestation. The right kind of packaging can also reduce the need for costly fumigation — which also has the potential to harm human and environmental health if misapplied — and diversify the types of commodities that can be shipped to communities in need, improving recipient satisfaction and nutrition.</p>
<p>MIT researchers have just released a <a href="http://cite.mit.edu/system/files/reports/Summary%20Report_New%20Packaging%20Types%20as%20Innovative%20International%20Food%20Assistance%20Instruments.pdf" target="_blank">new report</a> detailing an experimental study examining how different packaging approaches and technologies can reduce cost and improve quality of food assistance procured in the United States and shipped abroad.</p>
<p>The report, <a href="http://cite.mit.edu/system/files/reports/Summary%20Report_New%20Packaging%20Types%20as%20Innovative%20International%20Food%20Assistance%20Instruments.pdf" target="_blank">“New Packaging Types as Innovative International Food Assistance Instruments,”</a> details the study design and findings of the latest experimental evaluation implemented by the <a href="http://cite.mit.edu" target="_blank">Comprehensive Initiative on Technology Evaluation</a> (CITE), a program supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and led by a multidisciplinary team of faculty, staff, and students at MIT.</p>
<p><strong>Innovative study design </strong></p>
<p>Rather than conducting studies of these technologies in a lab, MIT researchers worked together with USAID and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to run a pilot study on a real procurement of food assistance headed for Djibouti, Djibouti and Durban, South Africa, major points of entry for food assistance in Africa.</p>
<p>Food assistance was shipped in eight different types of packaging, then carefully tracked, monitored, and inspected to determine effectiveness of the packaging. In addition, lessons were documented regarding supply chains and processes along the way. Many food assistance shipments have been using the same packaging for decades, especially paper and woven polypropylene bags. The new experiments tested larger bags, chemical compounds on bags that prevent insects from reproducing, and airtight liners that had the potential to keep out moisture and insects.</p>
<p>“This procurement produced generalizable data on the cost, effectiveness, and feasibility of using new packaging types in the food assistance supply chain,” says Mark Brennan, an MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning PhD student and CITE researcher leading the project. “Then, through fieldwork, we held interviews and key informant discussions with stakeholders in the food assistance supply chain to cross-validate data from the pilot procurement.”</p>
<p><strong>Recommendations to reduce loss, improve cost effectiveness</strong></p>
<p>At the close of the study, MIT researchers made a number of recommendations for USAID and USDA to consider based on key findings, demonstrating potential for cost savings and quality improvement along the supply chain.</p>
<p>“We found that bio-pesticide treated bags have the potential to decrease the cost relative to standard packaging types, and maintain the quality about as well as the standard packaging type,” Brennan says. “This packaging appears to not require as regular fumigation, which may improve the timeliness of USAID’s food assistance efforts. We also found that larger bags — 20 times larger than the standard packaging type — may bring cost benefits, conditional on some machinery investments along the supply chain. In practice, these bags and the required machinery may be appropriate for USAID warehouses.”</p>
<p>“It is always nice to find a win-win, and the study identifies applications where packaging technology improves cost and effectiveness,” says co-author Jarrod Goentzel, director of the MIT Humanitarian Response Lab and scalability lead for MIT CITE. “There is also a level of confidence that comes from conducting the study through standard procurement processes, thus exposing technologies to the sometimes-harsh realities of a global supply chain.”</p>
<p>Brennan says USAID and food assistance providers like the European Union can now consider incorporating these results into their programming moving forward.</p>
<p>“We also hope that our study will help USAID and other donors and their partners reconsider the role that packaging plays in their supply chain, and its role in improving cost, quality, timeliness, and even recipient satisfaction outcomes,” Brennan says.</p>
<p>"Working with the MIT team was a great experience,” says Greg Olson, the program operations division director for USAID’s Office of Food for Peace. “Without their expertise and ideas we would have never been able to get this project off the ground. It really demonstrated the value to the U.S. Government of working with academic institutions.”</p>
<p>CITE’s research is funded by the USAID U.S. Global Development Lab. CITE is led by principal investigator Bishwapriya Sanyal of MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and supported by MIT faculty and staff from D-Lab, the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center, the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center, the Center for Transportation and Logistics, MIT School of Engineering, and MIT Sloan School of Management.</p>
<p>In addition to Brennan, co-authors on the report include Daniel Frey, Jarrod Goentzel, and Prithvi Sundar. CITE conducted its research in partnership with USAID, USDA, and a range of USAID contractors.&nbsp;</p>
Mark Brennan (left) and Prithvi Sundar are graduate students working with MIT’s Comprehensive Initiative on Technology Evaluation to better understand and evaluate the food aid supply chain.Photo: MIT D-LabCITE, D-Lab, Food, Poverty, Developing countries, Urban studies and planning, Supply chains, School of Architecture and Planning, Research, International development3 Questions: Iyad Rahwan on the “psychological roadblocks” facing self-driving carshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/3-questions-iyad-rahwan-psychological-roadblocks-facing-self-driving-cars-0911
MIT Media Lab professor considers the trust gap between people and autonomous vehicles. Mon, 11 Sep 2017 10:59:59 -0400Peter Dizikes | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/3-questions-iyad-rahwan-psychological-roadblocks-facing-self-driving-cars-0911<p><em>This summer, a survey released by the American Automobile Association showed that 78 percent of Americans feared riding in a self-driving car, with just 19 percent trusting the technology. What might it take to alter public opinion on the issue? Iyad Rahwan, the AT&amp;T Career Development Professor in the MIT Media Lab, has studied the issue at length, and, along with Jean-Francois Bonnefon of the Toulouse School of Economics and Azim Shariff of the University of California at Irvine, has authored a new commentary on the subject, titled, “Psychological roadblocks to the adoption of self-driving vehicles,” published today in </em>Nature Human Behavior. <em>Rahwan spoke to </em>MIT News<em> about the hurdles automakers face if they want greater public buy-in for autonomous vehicles. &nbsp;</em></p>
<p><strong>Q:</strong> Your new paper states that when it comes to autonomous vehicles, trust “will determine how widely they are adopted by consumers, and how tolerated they are by everyone else.” Why is this?</p>
<p><strong>A:</strong> It’s a new kind of agent in the world. We’ve always built tools and had to trust that technology will function in the way it was intended. We’ve had to trust that the materials are reliable and don’t have health hazards, and that there are consumer protection entities that promote the interests of consumers. But these are passive products that we choose to use. For the first time in history we are building objects that are proactive and have autonomy and are even adaptive. They are learning behaviors that may be different from the ones they were originally programmed for. We don’t really know how to get people to trust such entities, because humans don’t have mental models of what these entities are, what they’re capable of, how they learn.</p>
<p>Before we can trust machines like autonomous vehicles, we have a number of challenges. The first is technical: the challenge of building an AI [artificial intelligence] system that can drive a car. The second is legal and regulatory: Who is liable for different kinds of faults? A third class of challenges is psychological. Unless people are comfortable putting their lives in the hands of AI, then none of this will matter. People won’t buy the product, the economics won’t work, and that’s the end of the story. What we’re trying to highlight in this paper is that these psychological challenges have to be taken seriously, even if [people] are irrational in the way they assess risk, even if the technology is safe and the legal framework is reliable.</p>
<p><strong>Q:</strong> What are the specific psychological issues people have with autonomous vehicles?</p>
<p><strong>A:</strong> We classify three psychological challenges that we think are fairly big. One of them is dilemmas: A lot of people are concerned about how autonomous vehicles will resolve ethical dilemmas. How will they decide, for example, whether to prioritize safety for the passenger or safety for pedestrians? Should this influence the way in which the car makes a decision about relative risk? And what we’re finding is that people have an idea about how to solve this dilemma: The car should just minimize harm. But the problem is that people are not willing to buy such cars, because they want to buy cars that will always prioritize themselves.</p>
<p>A second one is that people don’t always reason about risk in an unbiased way. People may overplay the risk of dying in a car crash caused by an autonomous vehicle even if autonomous vehicles are, on the average, safer. We’ve seen this kind of overreaction in other fields. Many people are afraid of flying even though you’re incredibly less likely to die from a plane crash than a car crash. So people don’t always reason about risk.</p>
<p>The third class of psychological challenges is this idea that we don’t always have transparency about what the car is thinking and why it’s doing what it’s doing. The carmaker has better knowledge of what the car thinks and how it behaves … which makes it more difficult for people to predict the behavior of autonomous vehicles, which can also dimish trust. One of the preconditions of trust is predictability: If I can trust that you will behave in a particular way, I can behave according to that expectation.</p>
<p><strong>Q:</strong> In the paper you state that autonomous vehicles are better depicted “as being perfected, not as perfect.” In essence, is that your advice to the auto industry?</p>
<p><strong>A:</strong> Yes, I think setting up very high expectations can be a recipe for disaster, because if you overpromise and underdeliver, you get in trouble. That is not to say that we should underpromise. We should just be a bit realistic about what we promise. If the promise is an improvement on the current status quo, that is, a reduction in risk to everyone, both pedestrians as well as passengers in cars, that’s an admirable goal. Even if we achieve it in a small way, that’s already progress that we should take seriously. I think being transparent about that, and being transparent about the progress being made toward that goal, is crucial.</p>
“Before we can trust machines like autonomous vehicles, we have a number of challenges,” says professor Iyad Rahwan.
School of Architecture and Planning, Artificial intelligence, Automobiles, Autonomous vehicles, Media Lab, PolicyMIT map offers real-time, crowd-sourced flood reporting during Hurricane Irmahttps://news.mit.edu/2017/map-real-time-crowd-sourced-flood-reporting-hurricane-irma-0908
Via social media, residents can contribute to public map that increases safety and helps response planning.
Fri, 08 Sep 2017 19:40:01 -0400School of Architecture and Planninghttps://news.mit.edu/2017/map-real-time-crowd-sourced-flood-reporting-hurricane-irma-0908<p>As Hurricane Irma bears down on the U.S., the MIT Urban Risk Lab has launched a free, open-source platform that will help residents and government officials track flooding in Broward County, Florida. The platform, <a href="https://riskmap.us/">RiskMap.us</a>, is being piloted to enable both residents and emergency managers to obtain better information on flooding conditions in near-real time.</p>
<p>Residents affected by flooding can add information to the publicly available map via popular social media channels. Using Twitter, Facebook, and Telegram, users submit reports by sending a direct message to the Risk Map chatbot. The chatbot replies to users with a one-time link through which they can upload information including location, flood depth, a photo, and description.</p>
<p>Residents and government officials can view the map to see recent flood reports to understand changing flood conditions across the county. Tomas Holderness, a research scientist in the MIT Department of Architecture, led the design of the system. “This project shows the importance that citizen data has to play in emergencies,” he says. “By connecting residents and emergency managers via social messaging, our map helps keep people informed and improve response times.”</p>
<p>Home to Fort Lauderdale, Broward County is located on the southeastern coast of Florida, just north of Miami. The announcement of Risk Map has been part of the county’s preparedness communications as the area braces for the storm.</p>
<p>"Once the reports are generated, we’ll be able to gather information and create a publicly available map in real time [to] allow those who are in flooded areas to travel safely if they need to, and to understand what the risks are around them,” Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief said at a news conference on Friday. “This type of information will assist us with assessing damage in real time during the storm event and help prioritize response efforts after the storm."</p>
<p>Researchers and government officials emphasized that Risk Map is a flood-reporting platform for the Broward County. For life-threatening situations residents should continue to call 911.</p>
<p>The Risk Map project is part of an ongoing collaboration between Broward County and the <a href="http://urbanrisklab.org/">MIT Urban Risk Lab</a>, which develops methods, prototypes, and technologies to embed risk reduction and preparedness into the design of cities and regions to increase the resilience of local communities. The MIT team aims to expand the map to new counties and add additional social media platforms in the near future.</p>
<p>“All our projects in the Urban Risk Lab try to create a conduit between government and citizens for preparing for and responding to events,” says Miho Mazereeuw, director of the Urban Risk Lab and associate professor of architecture and urbanism. “As cities become increasingly complex systems with growing populations, they bear the brunt of extreme weather events. Our platform works to increase community awareness so that we can reduce risk together.”</p>
<p>The Urban Risk Lab also piloted the system in Indonesia — where the project is called PetaBencana.id, or “Map Disaster” — during a large flood event on Feb. 20, 2017.</p>
<p>During the flooding, over 300,000 users visited the public website in 24 hours, and the map was integrated into the Uber application to help drivers avoid flood waters. The project in Indonesia is supported by a grant from USAID and is working in collaboration with the Indonesian Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Pacific Disaster Centre, and the Humanitarian Open Street Map Team.</p>
<p>The Urban Risk Lab team is also working in India on RiskMap.in. With support from the TATA Center for Technology and Design at MIT, the lab aims to launch the pilot this fall, in time for the monsoon season. The team is researching additional functionality for this two-way conversation with the public during such events and developing an alert system to inform residents.&nbsp;</p>
A view of hurricane Irma from the International Space StationImage: NASAArchitecture, Urban studies and planning, Disaster response, Natural disasters, School of Architecture and Planning, Weather, Climate